The gate squeaked when he opened it and the wood and wire fence swayed when the gate slammed back into place behind him. The door to the house stood wide open, but nobody appeared at his first knock, or his second.

He hesitated, then opened the screen door.

‘Hel o?’

The room was empty—unlived in empty. No furniture. No people. He was about to hol er another hel o when a door at what he guessed was the back of the house thudded closed and a few seconds later Kit came tripping into the room wearing faded jeans, a navy-blue singlet top and with her hair scraped back into a ponytail. He cleared his throat. She swung to him and froze in one of the shafts of sunlight that came streaming in through the front windows.

His stomach hol owed out. Dear Lord, she was lovely. A sense of regret stole through him, giving him the strength to push his shoulders back. ‘Hel o, Kit.’ He took two steps into the room and let the screen door close behind him.

‘Alex?’

Two lines creased her forehead. He had an insane urge to walk across and smooth them out.

‘What on earth are you doing here? I thought you’d ring or email, but…’

The sound of a truck screeching to a halt outside had her glancing behind him. ‘You’l have to excuse me for a minute.’ She shook herself, dusted off her hands. ‘It sounds as if my new furniture has arrived.’

She moved past him and out to the veranda to wave to the truck. She smel ed of soap and fresh cotton and she barely spared him a glance. He surveyed the room in an effort to distract himself from the way her jeans hugged the curve of her hips, at the memory of how his hands had traced those curves and how she’d—

His heart started to pound. He gritted his teeth. He glanced to his left, guessing the hal way that opened off there led to the bedrooms and bathroom. Given the proportions of the outside of the house, he’d guess there would be two bedrooms.

The mundane calculations helped settle his heart rate.

Kit half-turned in the doorway, not quite meeting his eyes, and smiled as if he could be anyone. ‘How was Africa?’

‘Amazing.’ He found himself suddenly eager to tel her al about it. He knew she’d appreciate it, that she’d understand. He opened his mouth to find she’d already swung away to greet a burly man with a clipboard.

‘Delivery for Mercer?’

‘That’d be me,’ Kit said with a smile that held genuine warmth, and Alex’s stomach dropped. Kit genuine warmth, and Alex’s stomach dropped. Kit didn’t want to hear about his trip. And there was no conceivable reason on earth why she should be glad to see him.

‘Do you need a hand?’

The burly man glanced at Alex, took in the suit and tie and shook his head. ‘We’l be right, mate. We do this for a living.’ He turned back to Kit. ‘Just tel us where you’d like the stuff.’

Bemused, Alex watched as Kit indicated where she wanted the dining table and chairs—in the smal part of the L-shaped living room, which he discovered adjoined the kitchen with a door that led out to the back garden.

‘I want the dresser there, the sofas here and here, and the entertainment unit against that wal .’

‘Rightio. Oh, and the boss was real y sorry the delivery was delayed so he sent someone to instal those shelves you ordered.’

‘That was kind of him. I want them on that wal there.’

She indicated an internal wal and Alex had never felt more like a third wheel in his life.

She turned to look at him again. And again those two lines creased her forehead. ‘We’l um…be out the back if you need us.’

‘No probs.’

Kit hitched her head in the direction of the back garden and Alex fol owed. Her back garden wasn’t any neater than the front. A row of haphazard azaleas bloomed along the fence to the right. A banksia stood sentinel at the back fence while, to the right, a giant frangipani stood wedged between the back of the house and a garden shed, threatening to push them both over. Some patches of the lawn were more sand than grass.

Kit, however, didn’t seem to find anything wrong with the place and she certainly wouldn’t care what his opinion of it was either. That much was evident.

‘Are you just passing through, Alex, or is there a purpose to your visit?’

Her ponytail bounced as she knelt down in front of a Cape Cod chair, picked up a piece of coarse sandpaper and started sanding.

His stomach started to cramp. He felt ridiculous in his dark suit and tie out here in her garden. He dragged the tie from around his neck and shoved it into his jacket pocket. He undid his top button and ordered himself to take a deep breath. ‘There’s a reason.’

Her ponytail kept bobbing. She was sanding that chair al wrong. If she weren’t careful, she’d pul a muscle. He had to clench his hands to stop from reaching out, hauling her to her feet and turning her to face him.

He couldn’t touch her. He’d made so much progress and he had no intention of backsliding now.

He just wanted to make things right—do the right thing. Touching her would be a step in the wrong direction.

‘Then any time today would be good…’

His teeth clenched when she stil didn’t turn around. He unclenched them to say, ‘I’m waiting for you to spare me a moment of your attention.’

‘From memory, when you were offered my ful attention you didn’t want it.’

Just like that, the old tension wrapped around them. Her hand froze mid-sand as if she couldn’t believe she’d uttered the words.

He wanted to swear and swear and swear. He should’ve had a plan. He should’ve rehearsed what to say. He should’ve known better than to trust his instincts when he was anywhere in the vicinity of Kit Mercer.

‘You resigned!’ The words shot out of him like an accusation. Unrehearsed.

‘You always were quick on the uptake.’

Kit had always been sassy, but rarely sarcastic.

His hands clenched and this time he did swear.

‘Can’t we try and keep this civilised?’

Final y she turned and planted herself in the half-sanded chair. ‘Why?’

Al his frustration bubbled up, threatening to choke him. ‘Look, I didn’t force you to sleep with me, al right? We were consenting adults and you were as into it as I was. I know I didn’t live up to your expectations and I’m sorry. I wish to God it had never happened. But it’s done now and I can’t undo it.’

Her eyes hardened. ‘Fine!’

‘What else can I do, other than apologise?’

‘Leave?’

The word kicked him in the centre of his gut and he knew then that this woman had left her mark on him for life. He also knew that if he was to save his sanity he had to rip her out of his life completely.

But he should be the one to suffer. Not her.

But he should be the one to suffer. Not her.

‘I can’t accept your resignation, Kit.’

An angry flush stained her cheeks. Her eyes glittered. ‘That’s your problem, Alex, not mine.’

‘You loved your job!’

‘So?’

‘And you were bril iant at it.’

She blinked.

‘Come back to Hal am Enterprises and I wil double your salary.’

‘No.’

‘I’l triple it.’ He planted his feet. ‘Kit, you’re too valuable an employee to give up on without a fight.’

She stared up at him and he could’ve sworn her bottom lip wobbled. ‘Alex—’

‘Look, come back. You don’t need to relocate and change your whole way of life. If working with me is so difficult for you, I’l relocate instead to our Brisbane office. I wil leave Donald in charge of operations in Sydney, I’l triple your salary and you won’t have to clap eyes on me again. I promise.’

Her eyes had grown huge. She pressed her hands to her cheeks. ‘I thought you’d ring, Alex, or email. I didn’t expect you to just turn up like this.’

Her hands shook. Her colour kept flooding and then receding. Should he have given her some warning? He’d been so intent on his mission he hadn’t thought what might be best for her.

But he knew how much she’d loved her job. She gained more satisfaction out of her job as project manager than he did running the entire company.

She shouldn’t feel compel ed to leave because of what had happened between them.

Stil , he’d been a fool to think that any meeting between them could be anything less than fraught.

He raked both hands back through his hair. In the warm spring sunshine his skin started to prickle beneath his suit jacket. ‘Why don’t I come back tomorrow at, say, 10:00 a.m.? It’l give you a chance to think over my offer. You’re obviously busy here and—’

‘No!’ She surged to her feet. ‘I don’t want to drag this out. Alex, I wil not be returning to Sydney. I mean to make this place home. I grew up in Tuncurry and I’ve missed it. This is where I want to live. The lifestyle, the people, the pace, it suits me more than Sydney ever did.’

Didn’t she care that her talents would be wasted here?

‘Your offer was more than generous—’ she hauled in a breath ‘—and I do appreciate it, but…’

She didn’t finish her sentence. She didn’t have to.

Her shrug said it al . Bile rose up to burn his throat, his tongue. His recklessness, his weakness, had made this woman’s life worse and there was nothing he could do to make amends. ‘What wil you do?’

‘I’l get a job. I have a lot of contacts here and the tourism industry is thriving. With my qualifications, it’l be a piece of cake.’

She had every right to that confidence. Whoever was lucky enough to employ her would find they had a gem.

‘You’re sure you won’t reconsider?’

She shook her head. And then she went so pale he found himself stepping forward to take her arm.

She lifted her hands to ward him off. Stepped away so he couldn’t touch her. As if his touch would poison her. Just for a moment he had to rest his hands on his knees.

‘Alex, I don’t want to raise my children in the city. I want to raise them here.’

He flinched at that word— children—and then straightened, but part of him was glad—fiercely glad

—that she’d uttered it. It reminded him of the impossible gulf that lay between them.

Her lips twisted and her eyes hardened at whatever she saw reflected in his face. But her colour didn’t return. He noted the way she twisted her hands together. To stop them from shaking?

‘Alex, I didn’t resign from Hal am Enterprises because I found it impossible to work with you. I resigned because I’m pregnant.’

He stared. For a moment it seemed as if time were suspended. And then her last two words hit him in the stomach like blows from a sledgehammer. I’m pregnant.

I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant.

No! He fel back. Not… No! ‘You can’t be serious?’ The words rasped from a throat that burned like acid.

‘I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.’

Her hands twisted and twisted. He stared at them and prayed they could save him. ‘With…?’

But he couldn’t finish the question. He reeled away from her, reeled al the way to the back fence away from her, reeled al the way to the back fence and the banksia tree. He dug his fingers into the hard bark of a branch and held on until the nausea passed. Anger pounded through him then, hot and thick and suffocating. At the edge of his consciousness he could hear Chad’s laughter taunting him like it did in his nightmares.

He swung around, strode back to where Kit stood and jabbed a finger at her. ‘You expect me to believe it’s mine?’ The words were harsher than anything that had ever scraped out of his throat before.

She folded her arms, moistened her lips and met his glare head on, although tears fil ed her eyes and he doubted she could see him properly through them. But she didn’t let a single one of them fal . ‘Just walk away, Alex,’ she whispered. ‘Just turn around and walk away and we’l pretend that none of this ever happened.’